Zack Hample has snagged 7,806 baseballs at 51 different major league stadiums since 1990. Find out how and see what else he's been up to.

2010 NLDS — Game 2

Reds versus Phillies? Whatever. I was just excited to get out of New York City for a day and see some playoff baseball.

This was the scene outside the 3rd base gate at Citizens Bank Park:

The whole street was blocked to traffic, and there was all kinds of stuff that you don’t see during the regular season. Check out the four-part photo below. Starting on the top left and going clockwise, you’re looking at a) a stage for a band, b) a live broadcast by a classic rock radio station, c) inflatable goodness, and d) various TV trucks:

Want to see what else there was?

Free/unlimited ice cream samples courtesy of Turkey Hill:

Given the sad fact that I’m allergic to sugar, I only had two. (But given the fact that I seem to be immune to calories, I still consider myself lucky.)

By the time the gates opened at 3:35pm, this was the crowd waiting to get in:

(Don’t get excited about the early opening time; the first pitch was scheduled for a little after six o’clock.)

Less than a minute after I reached the seats in left-center field, I got Phillies pitcher Jose Contreras to throw me a ball:

Two minutes later, it occurred to me that that was my 300th ball of the season.

This was the view to my right soon after:

The front row was already packed, and the left field seats ended up getting seriously crowded.

I headed over to right field. There was more room to run over there:

The main challenge was battling the sun. You can get an idea of the intense glare in the following panorama photo, taken by a friend and fellow ballhawk named Ryan. The red arrow is pointing to me:

Forty-five minutes into BP, I made a nice play in order to come up with my second ball. I’m not sure who was hitting. It was one of the Reds’ lefties. It was probably Jay Bruce or Joey Votto, but might’ve been Laynce Nix. Anyway, the batter ripped a line-drive homer that was heading one full section to my left, so I bolted in that direction, and as I reached the next staircase, I jumped and lunged and caught it on the fly — all this with the sun in my eyes and another guy reaching for the ball from behind. It probably didn’t look all that special from afar, but trust me, there was a lot that went into it.

My third ball was as unexciting as it gets: Aaron Harang retrieved a ball from the warning track in right-center and tossed it up to me. (I ended up giving it away to a kid after the game.)

I headed back to left field when a bunch of righties started hitting. Look how crowded it was:

There wasn’t an empty row anywhere, except at the very back of the section in left-center.

Toward the end of BP, I got the attention of Reds 1st base coach Billy Hatcher. He was roaming the outfield with his fungo bat, and I convinced him to hit me a fungo. I stood on the armrests of a seat in order to elevate above the crowd and give him a better target. He was only about 75 feet away, and I was probably in the sixth row. His fungo was right on the money, but it fell a few feet short of where I wanted it. I wanted to be able to reach up and catch the ball over my head. That would’ve prevented anyone else from interfering, but the ball ended up waist-high, so another fan in front of me got his glove on it. Conveniently, after we both bobbled it, the ball dropped straight down and bounced straight up off the concrete in my row, and I was able to grab it.

After BP, I raced to the 3rd base dugout and got my fifth ball of the day from the Reds’ equipment guy. Here he is just before he tossed it to me…

…and here are two photos of the ball itself:

Is that beautiful or what?

Here’s another beautiful thing — the military jet flyover after the national anthem:

The fans were pumped…

…and so was I because I had a ticket for the fancy-schmancy Diamond Club area behind home plate. (I won’t get into all the details of the club here. If you want to know more about it, check out my entry from April 25, 2007. That was my first time there.) This was my view during the bottom of the 1st inning. Note Bronson Arroyo’s fantastic leg kick, in addition to all the standing room behind the seats:

Did I mention that the fans were pumped?

Here’s another photo, pretty much taken from the same spot as the one above. The difference here is that Aroldis Chapman was on the hill:

It was my first time seeing him pitch in person, and MAN-ALIVE can that young fella throw a baseball!!! Look at the radar gun reading in the following photo:

That wasn’t even his fastest pitch.

I don’t know how to describe the movement on his fastball. In fact, there appears to be very little movement. When Chapman releases the ball, it just stays straight, like there’s no gravity or air resistance. It doesn’t even seem that much faster than, say, a 95mph fastball. It just seems sturdier, if that makes sense. Everyone in the aisle was frozen in place…just standing around and watching him pitch:

It was truly awesome, and I was glad to be so close to the action.

Despite Chapman’s velocity, the Phillies managed to score three runs off him, all of which were unearned. The Reds’ defense fell apart. Look how many errors they made:

Despite all the standing room I had, I didn’t come close to a foul ball, but you know what? That hardly even mattered. MLB used to have commemorative balls (like this and this) during the first two rounds of the postseason, but not anymore.

With Brad Lidge in the process of nailing down the save, I worked my way to the seats behind the Reds’ dugout…

…but didn’t get anything there after the final out.

Final score: Phillies 7, Reds 4.

SNAGGING STATS:

• 5 balls at this game (4 pictured on the right because I gave one away)

8 Comments

Ah, this was an interesting game to watch on TV. Must have been a lot of fun to be at it. I should note that, moments after you took the picture of the scoreboard showing all of the errors, all-american good guy Mike Sweeney got a hit in his first career post-season at bat. Good job, Mike! Also, its curious that you didn’t go for an umpire ball since you were in the diamond club. Couldn’t you get right above the ump tunnel? Seems like you could have got an umpire baseball and then hopped the railing to get into the first row above the Reds dugout. Anyway, good write up.
-Toddhttp://cookandsonbats.mlblogs.com

Very cool Zack! I have traded in my glove for a camera this off season. Tomorrow night I will be taking photographs on the RED CARPET of a film festival near L.A. I just hope a few celebrities show up. …… lol

Hopefully this is a step in a new direction and kind of following in my late fathers footsteps.

Hey Zack, What did they give out as you walked into the stadium? Also, why did they stop makeing baseballs with the division and championship series logos on it? Finally, are you going to a championship series or world series game.
Hope the new book is coming along well and you are doing well.
J.B.

RE: Division and Champ Series logos – The main reason I believe is simply that they discontinued the individual league offices and presidents of the AL/NL. So After 99, there was only the joint league MLB ball. Now they could have just as easily stamped some sweet logos on the MLB ball for each series. Wish they had and still did.

So these baseballs only were used from 96-99. And there are also some questions about those. For 96 and 97, there appear to be separate division balls, but 98-99 each division series uses the same. At least, this is what I’ve discovered through collecting:

Whoa, did I really neglect to answer all these comments for a month? Sorry about that…

TODD-
I had no motivation to get an ump ball because the balls in the first two rounds of the postseason are not commemorative.

JOHN-
Very cool. I’ve been catching some of your updates on Twitter. Glad to know things are going well.

J.B.-
They gave out rally towels. I gave mine to the woman who was standing right behind me in line. She was thrilled to get an extra one. Big deal. MLB stopped making commemorative balls for the LDS and LCS because, quite simply, not enough collectors were buying them. As for your question about going to other postseason games, I would’ve loved to, but didn’t want to spend THAT much money.

BIG LEAGUE BASEBALLS-
Yeah, that may have been part of it, but I talked to Howard Smith about this, and he mentioned the collector aspect.

JAMESON-
Dude! It’s great to hear from you. Where the hell have you been? I’m hoping to make it back to Denver next season, so I’ll keep you posted.

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